As a homeschooling parent, I believe parents should have a good deal of freedom in what they teach their children.
The majority of parents who homeschool are quite interested in ensuring their children learn skills that will help them throughout their lives. Many of those skills can’t be measured by tests administered to publicly-schooled kids. As a person who was your straight-A, good kid throughout public school, I can tell you I have retained very little of the facts I was required to memorize in order to pass tests and obtain my diploma – I retained and regurgitated the facts on cue, then they were generally meaningless to me and, thus, not retained. I am not an oddity among homeschooling parents, although I’m sure there are plenty who retained more of those facts than I did because they found them more interesting than I did.
The skills I learned when I began working (in high school) are the skills that have helped me since graduating high school. What math I didn’t retain, I relearned and I have since retained because it’s necessary for my job. Ditto for grammar, history, etc. There are far too many things I was never taught in public school that I learned after I graduated and began supporting myself (balancing a checkbook, dealing politely and maturely with the public from a customer service standpoint, dealing with the politics of working within a company, etc.). Obtaining a high school diploma does not necessarily mean one is capable of functioning, and being a benefit to, society.
Learning “necessary school stuff” (math, grammar, history, etc.) can be done in far more interesting ways than reading school textbooks and memorizing things for the sole purpose of passing a test. Things that are learned because you’re really interested in them are things that tend to be retained and expanded upon.
As you can probably guess, I dislike the idea of homeschooling families being overseen. It would probably be beneficial for the very small percentage of homeschooling parents who have no true interest in ensuring their kids are learning, but I don’t want to be subjected to something that I know is completely unnecessary for my family and the other families I know who homeschool, because we homeschool so that our children WILL learn. There is no doubt in my mind my homeschooled child will have a more well-rounded, more enjoyable education than his publicly-schooled stepbrother. His stepbrother . . . who has been advanced from grade to grade, all the way to the 10th grade, with spelling, math, grammar, reading, and handwriting skills equivalent to that of a 4th or 5th grader (and he’s in a decent public school). I will be amazed if he passes the test necessary to graduate from high school. And if he does, he will not be prepared to be a “functioning member of society” because he hasn’t learned the skills necessary to support himself. So, with public schools being overseen, there are still plenty of publicly-schooled kids who graduate who are fairly inept and unable to do much of anything with their diplomas. Why would people think overseeing homeschooling families would be any different? The people that think that are probably, generally, not overly familiar with homeschooling or with a variety of homeschooling families.
EchoKitty, there are distance-learning programs available to homeschoolers that will provide them with a diploma. A GED is also an option. There are a number of colleges (even “good,” recognizable colleges) that accept homeschoolers without a diploma. Homeschoolers can take the SAT, just as publicly-schooled kids can. “Transcripts” can be in the form other than those issued by public schools.
For people who are truly interested in learning more about homeschooling, even if you don’t plan to homeschool your kids (or if you don’t have kids), there are a multitude of books and websites out there that address the common, basic questions and concerns, as well as the more involved questions and concerns.
